Remembering The Old Songs:

THREE MEN WENT A-HUNTING

by Lyle Lofgren

(Originally published: Inside Bluegrass, September 2002)

My late cousin, Robert Lofgren, was a real hunting enthusiast. He
took
it so seriously he self-published a detailed, profusely illustrated
memoir, titled The Old Moose Hunter, of his adventures. About
the only
hunting I've done was to once send a Mason jar to cannery heaven with a
12-gage shotgun. It's getting to be the time of year when I stay out of
the woods. Even if I were wearing a red cap, I worry some hunter might
mistake me for a trophy-sized Ivory-Billed Woodpecker. I think of the
hunter in the Tom Lehrer song who brags:

I shot myself the maximum the game laws would allow:
Two game wardens, seven hunters, and a cow.

Instead, I'm going to stay indoors and sing about hunters. This
version, from Appalachia (Byrd Moore & his Hot Shots), betrays the
British source, in that it contrasts the world-views of three
stereotyped hunters: the realistic Irishman, the negativistic Scotsman,
and the imaginative Welshman. Evidently Dylan Thomas, holding forth in
the White Horse Tavern in Greenwich Village in the 1950s until his
liver gave out, wasn't the only Welshman to interpret the world
differently from the rest of us.

The origins of the song are obscure. According to the Ballad
Index
website, fragments of it appear in a couple of early 17th century
English plays. Either one playwright stole from the other, or both
borrowed a song that was already floating around. Whatever the source,
it must have been fairly popular among the people who emigrated here,
because versions have been collected all along the American Atlantic
seaboard.

The first generation of country musicians to record in the 1920s,
such
as Fiddlin' John Carson, were not professional musicians, and weren't
much into crowd entertainment techniques. Carson, in fact, never
learned to fiddle in time with a band's strict guitar rhythm. The next
generation of musicians cashed in on record sales, as well as improved
cars and roads, by travelling around to small towns, entertaining the
locals. A typical show would include a set featuring songs and ballads,
followed by a square dance with all-instrumental numbers. Byrd Moore,
Clarence Green, and Clarence Ashley, the Hot Shots, were
representative of this second generation. Clarence Ashley (guitar and
vocal), who also recorded a number of ballads with modal banjo, had cut
his musical teeth entertaining for a medicine show. Three Men Went
A-hunting was one of the Hot Shot's signature crowd pleasers. The
band
used the name of the town in which they were playing for the last
verse. That joke wouldn't work on a recording, so they substituted
Norton, Virgina, Moore's home town. This article resides in MBOTMA
town, so I reverted to the original joke. A more typical collected
version ends when the hunters find an owl, the Welshman declares it's
the devil, and they all run away. The "outhouse" verse was composed by
the New Lost City Ramblers when they covered the 1929 Byrd Moore &
his Hot Shots record (New Lost City Ramblers, Vol. 3; Folkways
FA2398,
available from Smithsonian
Folkways).

Complete Lyrics:Three men went a-hunting, and something they did find;
They came upon a porcupine, and that they left behind.
The Irishman said, "It's a porcupine," the Scotsman, he said, "Nay."
The Welshman said, "It's a pincushion with the pins stuck in the wrong
way."

Three men went a-hunting, and something they did find;
They came upon a toad-frog, and that they left behind.
The Irishman said, "It's a toad-frog," the Scotsman, he said, "Nay."
The Welshman said, "It's a jaybird with the feathers worn away."

Three men went a-hunting, and something they did find;
They came upon an outhouse, and that they left behind.
The Irishman said, "It's an outhouse," the Scotsman, he said, "Nay."
The Welshman said, "It's a church-house with the steeple blown away."

Three men went a-hunting, and something they did find;
They came upon MBOTMA, and that they left behind.
The Irishman said, "It's MBOTMA," the Scotsman, he said, "Nay."
The Welshman said, "It's the end of the world, let's go back the other
way."